Feb 26, 2014

08:55 AM

Vampires in Connecticut, and Our Link to Hitler's Skull, in Talks by State Archeologist

Shoreline Times

Note the thigh bones crossed beneath the skull - an old superstition to prevent the body of the "undead" from getting up out of the grave.

Vampires in old Connecticut?

Not exactly, says the state archaeologist, Dr. Nicholas Bellantoni (below). But, that didn’t stop folks in the 19th century from burying their dead in a bizarre practice to prevent “undead” family members from leaving their graves and walking back to the homestead.

Bellantoni “will shed light on one of the Nutmeg State’s most intriguing historical mysteries, the Jewett City Vampires,” says the event listing, and will “describe the history of the Jewett City vampires, including origins of the beliefs in the undead seeking nourishment from family members and how the living were protected.”

“There was evidence of vampire belief,” Bellantoni notes of the Eastern Connecticut phenomenon. Sometimes family members “would conduct an experiment, and if they found blood in their (deceased relative’s) heart” they would rearrange the body.

“The belief was the dead could remain undead.”

And, instead of laying the body out “all nice and anatomical,” they would disturb the grave by taking the thigh bones and cross them on the corpse’s chest, in a skull and crossbones fashion, he describes.

While old graveyards abound in the state, this is little-known historical trivia. Bellantoni says the strange custom was driven by fear of disease. At the time, tuberculosis was at epidemic levels and entire families would be stricken.

“It was the biggest killer before the Civil War,” he says, adding, “It ran in families.”

It was a belief that dead family members would come back from the grave to spread the disease to healthy survivors. At that time there was much ignorance about tuberculosis and this was long before medical science had embraced germ theory, he says.

The gravesite Bellantoni will talk about is in Griswold, the town that’s home to Jewett City, where in the 1990s, two boys playing on a gravel bank unearthed two human skulls. Bellantoni was called in to investigate and he determined that the gravel pit had once been a Colonial-era cemetery.

“Dr. Bellantoni will present some of the fascinating projects he has worked on, including modern forensic investigations, early Native American sites, Colonial farmsteads, historic cemeteries and industrial mills,” says the listing on the Friends of the Office of State Archeology website. “He will include "vampires," Adolf Hitler, Lieutenant Eugene Bradley (after whom Bradley Airport is named), Samuel Huntington, Venture Smith, Henry Opukaha’ia, Albert Afraid of Hawk, Squire Elisha Pitkin, Gershom Bulkeley, and a host of others."

There’s a $5 admission fee for those who are not members of the Litchfield Hills Archaeological Society members. For more information, call 860-868-0518, or see the institute’s website. (Right, Adolf Hitler. Image from the Thomas J. Dodd Papers, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. Photo by Presse-Hoffmann-Berlin.)